Enterprises suffer more ransomware than smaller businesses

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor has announced additional findings for the enterprise sector (organisations with more than 1,000 employees) from its annual global 2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report.

According to the survey, 65 percent of organisations in the enterprise sector suffered a cyberattack within the last 12 months, which is similar to the results among companies of all sizes (68 percent). The most common security incidents are also the same: phishing, ransomware, and user account compromise.

However, larger organisations are a more frequent target for ransomware or other malware attacks: 48 percent of enterprises experienced this type of security incident on premises, compared to 37 percent among organisations of all sizes. Malware attacks are less common in the cloud: just 21 percent of respondents in the enterprise sector experienced one within the last 12 months.

“It is no surprise that the enterprise sector suffers malware attacks at a higher rate than smaller organisations. After all, ransomware operators want to maximise their profits, so they consider which organisations are most able to pay a ransom to reduce business downtime — and the larger an organisation is, the costlier an operational disruption will be,” says Dmitry Sotnikov, VP of product management at Netwrix. “On the other hand, larger organisations have more tools to spot the attack that might stay unnoticed for SMBs. In addition, enterprises have bigger infrastructure with more endpoints that statistically increases the chance of the security incident.”

The enterprise sector also reports larger expenses as a result of cyberattacks than their smaller counterparts. Indeed, 28 percent of enterprises estimated their financial damage from cyberthreats to be $50,000 and higher, compared to just 16 percent among organisations overall.

“Smaller companies often underestimate their risk of attack, reasoning that cybercriminals tend to target enterprises because they store more intellectual property (IP) and other sensitive data. But our survey shows that organisations suffer cyberattacks with a similar frequency regardless of their size,” says Dirk Schrader, VP of security research at Netwrix. “Every organisation has valuable data, such as customer and employee information, and is therefore a target for attackers. What’s more, SMBs are not only a target on their own but as a way into the larger enterprises that consume their services.”